For your amusement - The Scrollwheel!

Oh how we have all been here one way or another!! ;)

Ms. Not So Savvy!

So, Ms. 'thought she was pretty internet savvy' here has made a glaringly fundamental mistake!

This blog began with the intention of being anonymous and for the most part, over almost six years, I have achieved that. There has of course been one or two 'glitches' but nothing major and I was pretty convinced that I had secured it well enough that strangers couldn't find it and associate it with me, the real person.

WRONG!

It transpired yesterday that someone I had met online only the day before, managed to find 'gemmak'....and more worryingly, he did it very easily, dammit! I had overlooked one thing (that I am aware of!). Well to be more specific I hadn't overlooked it, I had considered it and thought it highly unlikely anyone would go that route.

Wrong again!

As it happens in this case (if you read this you know who you are and I should thank you for making me aware!)it doesn't actually matter and there's no real issue other than my embarrassment but given my recent stalker episode it does concern me. I have however now 'plugged the hole' so it will be much harder for anyone to go the same route in the future but it has made me think again about the fact that over the years I have got a little complacent and that I must sharpen up my act.

Incidentally, for obvious reasons I won't advertise the 'loophole' here but if you want to know for the preservation of your own anonymity, just drop me a line or a comment.

Ms. Not so bloody savvy eh? Duh!

The week that was...

....was not a good one, this one I am determined will be at least something of an improvement!

The last one began with my being dumped by the man that I thought was 'different' and ended with my annihilating my precious laptop on Saturday night, it was a death by a half a cup of tea, which given my usual care was particularly annoying. Really, I have protected that machine almost with my life and at three years old it still looked brand new. Various forms of CPR were performed and it has resided since in the airing cupboard in bits but all to no avail, it was a fatal blow. Bugger!

On the upside it means I have a bright shiny new one now, courtesy of my mother who very kindly offered to lend me the necessary readies to buy it, there was no way I could raise that kind of money right now....I hate borrowing money but I had no choice. Life without a laptop is almost unthinkable in gemmaks-ville.

Among all of this there is one very definite silver lining however, I have by default rid myself for ever of the horribly heinous Vista!

Woot ;)

Bloody computers!

I have spent the better part of the last three days trying to fix TP's computer, which, to put it in *ahem* technical terms, is completely and utterly borked!

I won't bore you with the details but it's status is far from happy and having tried absolutely everything I can think of, within my limited knowledge, it remains, still to this moment, completely and utterly borked! Nothing I have done has made a significant difference and most of what I would have liked to have tried I haven't been able too because of the problem I am trying to fix!

So...I have thrown in the towel, given up, admitted defeat, gone away with my tail between my legs and as I type, nice 'Mr Pro computer fixing guy' is taking a look at some considerable expense....and I have that horrible feeling that any minute now I am going to get a rather large dollop of egg on my face!

Watch this space.

Ugh!

The bother with Billy Gates!

We all know this feeling! Enjoy....

'Ready to wear' @ gemmak designs

gemmak designs is now offering a new service...
complete 'ready to wear' designs starting at only £12!

The new 'ready to wear' collection of blog designs is just that, ready made complete blog designs that are sold as seen and 'ready to wear' immediately, allowing them to be half the price of those made to specific order. They are however still 'one offs' and once one has been sold it will not be repeated, guaranteeing your blog a personal look.

The design of your choice will be customised with you blog title on order and where space allows, a line of text can also be placed in the header.

There are currently five regular designs to choose from and four Christmas/seasonal designs and I will be adding more shortly.

The low price includes installation to your blog and where the design is a Christmas one it also includes hosting of the images and re-installation of your usual design once the festive season is over.

The cost for the seasonal designs is only £12 and for the regular designs just £15 .....and if you would like to purchase one as a gift for someone I can send you or your friend a gift certificate.

All you have to do is choose the one you want and mail me to let me know, it couldn't be easier!

You can of course still order a design specifically tailor made for you, at the normal starting price of £30 (see terms and conditions for pricing details) or a tailor made Christmas look starting at just £25.

Click the images for a larger size preview and if you wish to see a design 'working' please email me and I will give you a link to view.

Please feel free to email me any questions.

*N.B. Payment can be made in GBP or USD at current rates


CHRISTMAS DESIGNS

Christmas stars
(Available with or without coloured sidebar and any colour background)


All Wrapped Up
(available with or without stars and any colour background)


Christmas Kitty
(Available with or without coloured sidebar and any colour background)



Contemporary Tree




REGULAR DESIGNS

Computer Girl
(Available with any colour background)


Relax


Notepad
(Available with or without pencil graphic)


Ladybug
(Available with any colour background)


Black Heart

Weird or what!!!

The weirdest, spookiest thing happend to me first thing this morning and I might add it was something I could probably have managed my Sunday morning without !

Those of you who are of a delicate nature might like to close this page now, this is weird and it's not a pleasant subject matter to say the very least.

Ok, we all know how odd dreams can be now and then, the weird and sometimes not so wonderful that our sleeping minds manage to drag up occasionally and mine is up there with the best of them but the one thing I never do is have what might be called traditional nightmares. By that I mean nightmares of the 'horror movie genre'... but last night I did. I had a truly horrible nightmare revolving around the severing of someones head (big ugh) and the subsequent 'transportation' of said severed body part around the streets of some nameless town! Don't ask me any other details, I don't recall any more than that thankfully but it was one of those disturbing vivid nightmares that was still with me, bothering me, when I got up.

The fact that I had this nightmare is probably not very strange or spooky given that last night Fletch and I watched a TV show about horror movies just before we went to bed, but bear with me here, things were about to get very much more weird!!

Having having woken up a little and having just kindly regaled Fletch with the tale of my nightmare (I'm too kind) I settled in front of my lappy with my first cup of coffee of the day and got about the business of checking my mail. At the top of the page was an item of spam that had snuck it's way through to my inbox. I use a preview pane so there was no avoiding the offending mails contents....which was just one line, no link, no nothing, just one, short, line of text as follows;

"Man Parades Streets With Severed Head"

WTF!!??

I have to admit to being er, ever so slightly fazed for a moment or two despite the fact I am not superstitious and believe in almost nothing.... but hey, it was early, I hadn't woken up properly!

Further investigation revealed that there was a news item a few days ago regarding a guy in Bangladesh who paraded the streets with a severed head, so no doubt that was somehow the prompt for the spam but it still seemed pretty weird that I should first have the nightmare at all and then the first thing I see on my computer is that very un-delightful little missive!

Nokia nightmare!

If I learn nothing else in life I should learn to adhere to the principle of 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'....specifically where Nokia is concerned!

I have been here countless times before but I never learn that when Nokia persistently harass me to update my phone's firmware.... it's just not going to be a good idea. I know it's not going to be a good idea, I have proven it to myself more times than I care to remember but the promise of the however unlikely possibility that a new firmware version might just include a new feature I can't possibly live without, is just too much to resist! This time I didn't even have any negative 'issues' with the version already running but even that couldn't dissuade me from falling into the Nokia trap!

One would like to think that a company with the size and market presence of Nokia would employ developers that could develop? I know I am being grossly naive in this preconception but I am ever stupid hopeful that just once a firmware version will actually manage to flash it's way happily and efficiently onto my phone and work!

Of course not, my naivety knows no bounds and so again this morning I have spent two hours, and I hasten to add after following Nokia's own instructions to the letter, not only trying to recover my phone back to it's original state after Nokia utterly annihilated it but this time also having to recover my laptop back to some semblance of it's former self!!!

I suppose I should really consider myself lucky, at least I did eventually manage to persuade it into recovery after umpteen attempts and some serious frustration. Yes, this is a good and lucky thing I promise you...... some previous efforts at this malarkey over the years have been known to render the receiving handset completely useless and fit only for a landfill site somewhere!


*On a more positive and completely unrelated note....I get to hook up with Lisa and Ian again tomorrow :o))

Virgin on the ridiculous!

And yesterday's other 'delight' in customer issues....

After much fobbing off and mis-information, Virgin Media, my ISP finally admitted that my lack of connection when I awoke yesterday was a fault at their end. This admission alone had not been an easy thing to achieve and in fact I only discovered it when having visited my local computer shop in an effort to buy the part I was told I needed the proprietor said that he had had over twenty customers during the morning all with the same problem and all with Virgin as their ISP!

Of course, Virgin's half-witted helpline staff didn't bother to inform me of the problem at any point in the proceedings and despite having promised on five occasions to call me back, not one call back did I receive. The last time I spoke to them a guy who appeared to have less technical knowledge than even I do told me it was my modem at fault and by the afternoon the helpline had 'conveniently' switched to a recorded message telling me that the fault would be rectified by 15.00 hours. In fact it wasn't up and running until gone 18.00 hrs but that I can accept, we all know that fixing this stuff is a pain, what I can't accept is Virgin's inability to take responsibility for the problem at the front end and to just be honest with the customer. It's not that hard is it to just adhere to a few basic principles of customer service??

Whilst I was wasting my money on their expensive phone lines I decided to also tackle the long standing 'phone line' issue we have. When Virgin originally installed our cable facility 18 months ago, it was to include TV, broadband and a phone line but they had problems installing the phone. They promised to return and complete the job....but despite numerous calls and much beating of one's head against a brick wall they never did. Yup....for 18 months we have been paying line rental for a phone line that doesn't work!!!! My patience already worn thin finally snapped and I made my feelings on the subject of the whole debacle of an operation abundantly clear....the result, in theory at least someone will be here Tuesday to at last connect our land line and the process has been set in motion to recoup the line rental over the time it hasn't been operational. However, if their thus far apparent 'form' and speed of service continue, by the time we actually receive a refund it will probably be worth pennies at current inflation rates!

No wonder Mr Branson is so well off! He (and those like him) have us by the proverbial balls, we can't migrate our custom elsewhere because they make it so damn difficult to do so and even if we have the fortitude to fight that fight it seems that none of the big providers are much better. In a corporate world where the benchmark is so low and where we have no real choices there is little to motivate these companies to behave with any real integrity!

How bloody wonderful!

Do you detect a note of sarcasm there in the title of this post? Today is not going well... Fletch is away on business and I have 24/7 alone to try and occupy myself. I don't know anyone in these parts, I don't have a job to go too and too much time on my own is NOT my forte. Now to add to that I have another and particularly well timed (not) issue. A clue is to be found in the format of this post perhaps. When I have all this time to fill I really rely on my computer to keep my mind occupied... And what has happened? My bloody internet connection has dropped off is what has happened..... and after much expensive time on the phone to the halfwits at the ISP's (un) helpline it would appear that it's not likely to be restored anytime soon! I am not chuffed to say the least. In fact I am particularly un-chuffed! The halfwits have fobbed me off with a new modem which will take days possibly to arrive and which I have to wait in to sign for... though of course they can't even tell me which day it might deign to arrive on, so I cant even go out! On top of that I have a sneaking suspicion that when it does turn up it's not going to solve the problem. Un-chuffed is an understatement!.... and the clue in this post? I'm reduced to blogging from my phone. :-/

What......no coffee??

Yesterday morning, having only just staggered out of bed, bleary eyed and with a brain only functioning at minimum capacity things began to fall apart almost immediately and just how much we rely on the infrastructure that is the 21st century was bought into sharp focus!

Our level of dependence on modern day conveniences, things we take for granted without a second thought, but that millions of people throughout the world don't have the privilege of, is really quite concerning and our ability to function efficiently without them is even more worrying.

What am I talking about? Well in this case power, the items littered around our lives that rely on it and the fact that at an early hour yesterday we had a complete power outage.....before I had even managed to get the first coffee of the day organised, this was not a good start to the day!

So, coffee-less and grumpy I decided that as I had a doctors appointment anyway I would wander into town early and have breakfast and the much needed coffee at Costa. Things were to go further downhill. As I approached the town I was aware of umpteen alarm sirens ringing, a sure sign that the power outage wasn't confined only to our building, and sure enough as I turned the corner into the main street it was very apparent that no-one had power anywhere. Ugh.... still no coffee!

From there on in it began to dawn on me just how much we take for granted. Next I thought I would make use of the time and go check my poorly bank balance....nope, ATMs don't function without electricity. Ok, I'll go buy something to eat and drink from the supermarket...nope, point of sale equipment doesn't work without electricity. Right then, I'll get to the doctors early....and sit in the window-less waiting room in the dark, unable to even read a magazine, fun and still no damn coffee!

Next problem, the doctor can't access my notes, they are on the computer of course, computers don't work without power, ok, I refresh his memory, I need a prescription.....nope, prescription requires computer, computer requires electricity....you know the rest!

Finally an 'old fashioned' handwritten prescription pad is located. I go back into town to get the prescription filled....nope, the pharmacy can't dispense, dispensing is via a computer, the computer of course needs power, there is no damn power, they can't do it manually, they don't have the 'systems' in place.

I decided I might as well go home, still without coffee. The entire town was littered with the staff of shops and banks standing aimlessly outside their premises looking completely lost, unable to do anything without power and completely at a loss as what to do other than apologise over and over again to disgruntled customers for the inconvenience....that wasn't their fault in the first place.

At home I was stuck still. I decided to tidy up, our bathroom and kitchen have no windows, pitch black in there, too dark to do anything, right, I could catch up on the ironing....no I couldn't, irons need power, ok, get showered....nope, showers need power....and on it went, no power, no router, no computer and still no bloody coffee!

We know of course how much we rely on modern conveniences but we don't truly realise just how much until they all fall off at once but strangely, once I had gotten over the being frustrated aspect and accepted there was damn all I could do about it, it was actually quite liberating. I played with Hammy and I read a book and all without the guilt of thinking I should be doing something else more constructive, because there was nothing else I could be doing.....because it all needs power!

I got my first cup of coffee around late lunch time when the boffins at the sub-station got their act together, and you know what, I survived! ;o)

Funny old world.

Sun, sea and sleep?

I wish! .....the reality is probably rain, rough seas and re-boots!


We are off for the weekend again, I say 'again' because whilst I enjoy the current seemingly constant visiting of folk, the idea of a few weekends just doing damn all at home, is becoming more attractive as the weeks go by. This time our destination is to the south coast and the 'outlaws', who's computer has died a very significant death and requires some heavy duty resurrection. Consequently instead of suncream and surfboards our weekend's packing includes Fletch's ever ready 'geek box' of miscellaneous hardware items (which as sod's law dictates will contain everything but the one item we desperately need to get the machine up and running), software and the statutory tool kit!

Hey....the weather forecast is dismal anyways and the sleep, well I'm still having major sleep issues (i.e. I don't) but at least I can wander a different house in the wee small hours, as always, enjoy the company....and there is Sophie the cat! :o)

Connected!

At last, after six months of faffing and fiddling I have a stable wireless connection! Yipeeeee :o)

The answer, the parting of a considerable sum of money for a new router.

It seems that as with most things, Vista had a particular problem with the old one, what doesn't Vista have a problem with is what I would like to know?

Anyway, problem solved, no more two hour sessions each morning trying merely to connect, no more disappearing connection at random intervals during the day necessitating yet more hours of fiddling and no more wires dragged half way around the flat just waiting for one of us to hook a foot into and land in a heap on the floor!

Hey, the new router even has lots of pretty blue flashing LCD's embedded in the front for entertainment, what more could a girl want?....ok, ok, those might just begin to get a little annoying over time but I couldn't resist!


**N.B. For Kitty, as requested, the answers to the 50 trax post are here.

Spaghetti dysfunction!

The best way I know, for me at least, to distract myself from any troubles is to become embroiled in something fiddly (ok some may say anal) and faffy but of little consequence....and so hence it was that yesterday I tackled the long avoided nightmare we all have somewhere in our home, the spaghetti dysfunction of tousled wires we try desperately to 'poke' out of sight behind the TV/computer etc. etc. only to find that the more we poke the more of a mess and a tangle it all degenerates into!

This was a treble purpose effort I hasten to add, not only did I want to tidy up and unravel the mess but also it was yet another another step in my endeavours to find out just why I can't maintain a wireless connection. Thirdly the issue of why Fletch's very expensive amp. seems to have stopped doing it's stuff, needed investigating!

I achieved 1.5 of my goals! The spaghetti dysfunction was transformed from this....

(don't look Fletch)


to this....



....and I may have solved the connection problem (only time will tell on that one, I have been here before as some know only too well) but the amp.? Dead as a do-do it would seem :o(

Ok, 50% success rate isn't bad, and I did a pretty good job of taking my mind off all the other stuff going on around me right now but mostly I think I deserve a small medal for even daring to unplug all that lot, unravel it....and then getting it all going again in under two hours, the amp. aside of course!

Reference.....

....the miffed cat face in the last post, please don't anyone even mention computers or connections to me right now...or re-formats or AV or routers (particularly not routers) or apps. or hard drives or partitions or Vista or ....hell just not anything even remotely concerned with bloody, sodding, hateful, spiteful computers! Nothing! Zip! Nada! Thank you.

I'm going for a beer. Correction, I'm going for lots of beer! ;o)

Losing control!

It's a very odd experience, when that which is usually under one's own sole control is suddenly given over to another!

What the bloody hell am I going on about you are wondering aren't you?

Well it's this: I have been having for a fair time now 'connection problems' with this infernal machine that is usually welded to the end of my arms! Problems that despite months of fiddling and faffing and attempts to diagnose, had me completely baffled (ok, thats not hard I grant you) and to make matters worse, what has been an occasional difficulty suddenly turned into an out and out, full time, pain in the rear!

Enter, a knight in shining software, who this morning did that very weird thing and took remote control of my machine in an endeavour to repair whatever damage I had probably inflicted at some point in history! I don't know quite why it always feels so odd to me, but the sight of my mouse pointer moving around and actually knowing where it needs to go, whilst I sit back and do absolutely damn all, is always weird...though in this case it was also fascinating, I was riveted watching what was going on and seeing places I had never even seen before, or at least had never dared tamper with myself!

And the upshot? My machine is behaving so much better than it has in a while and I have a connection again...yes, a real live connection, that thus far hasn't 'done the off' without warning and though I probably am tempting fate by even saying it.......it seems pretty stable right now!

So, thank you to my knight in shining software.... but please, those little er...'anomalies' that you found on here could perhaps remain just between ourselves!? ;o)

"Take back the web"

I am beginning to become seriously tempted to!

For those of you who don't have a geek in their lives who often times can be found 'sporting' various items of geek-wear emblazoned with appropriately geeky slogans, "take back the web" was/is an advertising slogan for Firefox.

Against all attempts at persuasion I have resisted migrating to the aforementioned browser, in the main because the time I spend fiddling with designs and code would mean I would need to run both browsers far more often than I do now and let's face it, for good or evil, the majority still use I.E. so I would rather get it right there first.

That said, since the enforcement of Vista in my life and the impact that appears to have on I.E. (none of it good) I am finding it harder and harder to resist the lure of Firefox......the fact that it just works is a kind of an attractive prospect!

Just call me 'Herman'.....

.....because I feel like him, Herman Munster that is!

I have one of those necks, you know the one, it hurts like hell and it doesn't do what it should, it's locked in position shooting pain from my shoulder to the top of my head and even copious amounts of pain killers and deep heaty kind of stuff isn't rendering it any the more mobile or pain free. I don't usually 'do' pain killing drugs, tending to think that unless we are talking a life threatening kind of pain then I can manage without, I have to fill my little body with too many pharmaceutical 'wonders' daily as it is without adding to it unnecessarily. This hurts though, big hurts, that or I have become a pain wimp but whatever even with the damn pills it's not good.

I have no idea what I have done to render myself in this pathetic Herman-esque condition, maybe I just slept oddly on it (on the odd occasion I actually sleep these days) or maybe it's sitting in a different position at my new computer table, who knows...... but I do know the novelty has worn off now!

The death of a domain

'gemmak.co.uk' is about to bite the dust.

Still un-gainfully employed and trying to save money I made the decision to no longer maintain my domain and the webspace I have enjoyed at a cost, for years, reasoning that I don't make enormous use of it and the money could be better spent right now.

In the way that things seem to transpire, it wasn't quite as straightforward as it should have been. My initial, um.... 'bright idea' that involved the simple principle of 'well just don't pay the host and the registration guys and they will kill it all off' was fine until I realised just how much I have used it, just how much how much of my blog was hosted there and how many bits and pieces of other peoples blogs were loitering there from the days when it was just easier to host the stuff myself rather than keep opening accounts for others.

Arghhhh.

So yesterday, the whole of yesterday, I spent trying to find where all the odd bits from years of blogging belonged, moving them, putting them back in, making sure no links were broken and mailing those whose sites were about to collapse unexpectedly along with the demise of the domain. Thus far only one has got back to me, I did a redesign on that to make up for her aggravation and finally I think I have my own stuff all safely relocated....save for the few bits of course that are file types no-one seems to want to host for free. What's the issue I wonder with 'ICO.' files? There just doesn't seem to be anywhere that will have 'em!

I'm kinda sad to lose the domain, it's been mine for years and years but common sense must prevail. Doubtless I have also missed something along the way in yesterday's fiddlings and there will be a glaring 'red cross' somewhere in my blog (if you see one let me know!) but on the up-side I have saved myself over £50 and let's face it, I can hardly say my time is worth more right now!

A glutton for punishment

That's me, a glutton for punishment, I was not going to let the service pack issue beat me and so last night I tried again, all seemed well and I went to bed thinking I had cracked it on the 5th try....but no!

This morning Microsoft popped me up an oh so lovely little message informing me it hadn't actually been installed! That will be why the machine was still working then?!

So, back to it, I won't bore you with the number of 'windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown/serious error/memory problem yada, yada, yada' messages I have been through, or how many blue screens I have been witness too (I thought we had seen the back of those with the demise of M.E!) or how many times I have had to fight tooth and nail to get a connection along the way but finally it is installed!

It's been something akin to getting blood from a stone, but it's in and the machine is still alive this time, my AV is even working (for those that don't know M/S have released this service pack knowing it has compatibility issues with various AV software packages! Hmmmm, impressive).....how long I wonder until the first evidence of Vista's usually flakiness rears it's ugly head again?

Me? Skeptical? nah! ;o)

Oh...but I did find a MOV. file converter that works....well it did previously, it remains to be seen if it still does! ;o)